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The untenable increase in meeting volume is made worse by ineffective meetings. Seventy-one percent of senior managers told Harvard Business Review their meetings were unproductive and, in a different study, 73% of people said they “multitask” during meetings. More than 90% of respondents in that same survey admitted to daydreaming instead of focusing on the meeting conversation.

Every project requires meetings. In fact, managing a project is mostly a series of meetings.

Decisions can save you valuable time and resources to drive projects forward on time and on budget. It frees you up to focus on managing the project, instead of creating agendas and looking for earlier notes, action items and decisions. 

In 2002, Daniel Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on cognitive bias. He and Amos Tversky found leaders are overconfident in their decision-making: Personal biases, combined with poor processes and lack of preparation, lead to bad decisions. Further, research from Harvard professor Cass Sunstein revealed how the management team decision processes can escalate individual decision biases and make the situation worse.

Array Architects, a leader in designing healthcare facilities, was looking for a solution to help manage meetings with its board of directors. 

Backe, a leading construction firm in Norway, needed a solution to improve its meetings. Leaders were spending upwards of 80% of their day in inefficient meetings, where the agenda was poorly planned, attendees were not prepared in advance, and follow-up items were frequently forgotten before they could be completed.

The Meeting Engagement Score™ by Decisions applies organizational psychology to meetings. It is an algorithm that assesses and predicts the likely success of a meeting based on indicators of attendee engagement and agenda quality.

Microsoft Teams is the hub for team collaboration in Office 365. It integrates the people, content and tools a team needs to be more engaged and effective. Here are three ways to leverage Teams for more successful meetings. 

More than 50% of an executive’s time is spent in meetings and the average office employee spends five hours each week in meetings. For many people, those numbers are low.

Daniel Kahneman is the 2002 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics. His research is the basis for the Decisions Meeting Engagement Score™, which assess and predicts the likely success of a meeting from indicators of attendee preparedness and agenda creation. 

Kahneman challenges assumptions of human rationality prevailing in modern economic therapy. Organization psychologist and Decisions advisor Knut Ivar Karevold shares: “Kahneman’s work is the foundation for those of us who study after him. In my own work and through consulting with Decisions, we are able to identify that individual biases and over-reliance on ‘gut reactions’ leads to poor decision-making in settings such as meetings. This can have devastating effects on business performance.” 

Decisions helps you get the most out of your team members by providing them with all the tools necessary to have more efficient and productive meetings.